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I wanted to share a somewhat new group in Lethbridge- the Lethbridge Vegan Potluck Group. I haven’t had a chance to go yet, being busy with the little one and all, but it sounds and looks like they have shared some really great meals together, as well as lots of useful information.

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Our apple tree is packed with apples this year- a nice reward for having none last year. About 2 weeks ago, they started turning red and falling- I don’t remember them being this early 2 years ago. Despite being super busy with baby, house renovations and just everyday living, we knew we couldn’t let them go to waste. I’ve been admiring Kevin’s apple crush for quite a while now, so we attempted our own. With baby strapped on, the three of us set up our assembly line of wash, cut, juice, squeeze resulting pulp for juice and collect juice in a primary fermenter. It took almost 6 hours! Although, baby bird did have a freak out about mid way, so dad had to finish the rest on his own.

Next year, (or next time; as our neighbors have now donated many of their apples to the cause) we will find a more efficient way to juice and press the apples. We just have a small household juicer and a big cheesecloth. When it was all over, we ended up with about 3 gallons of juice and the fellah at the wine store sold us some appropriate yeast. So, in it went, and now we wait..

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Well, I am back, happy to be in the garden- with my little kangaroo tucked into our favorite mei tei style carrier. Motherhood has been very good to me and I adore our little bird and am so happy to be spending the summer with a newborn. We don’t get to spend a lot of time in the garden yet, but we try and take a walk out there every day. There has been a lot of rain this year, as I’m sure most Southern Albertans can attest. The garden has taken a beating (we lost quite a few tomatoes and all of our cucumber seedlings) but now that we are getting some sunshine, the plants are thriving.

A first for this garden is garlic. We planted it last fall and it was one of the first plants to come up this year. I love planting in the fall and letting things just come up when they are ready. The garlic seems to be doing well judging from the top growth. It reminds me of shooting stars:

Just like onions, the tops are edible and are called garlic scapes. Thanks to my morning blogroll, I found this out through SouleMama. She makes pesto with them and recommends pruning them to put more energy into the garlic bulbs. I might just have to leave a few because I want to see what they look like when they flower! But I can’t wait to harvest the garlic this fall. There is nothing like locally grown garlic- the cheap storebought stuff from China (tell me why we must import garlic from other countries when it can be grown here?) just doesn’t stand up.

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Throughout my pregnancy, I’d have to say that breakfast foods have been a consistent craving, or rather food preference. Which is fine, since we eat good, local eggs, homemade jam, and good (sometimes homemade) bread. I also have been going through a lot of yogurt, and the organic choices out there just seem to be getting more plentiful. Yay!

There’s nothing better with some thick, creamy yogurt than some good, crunchy granola. I’ve bought my share of it over the last 7 months, some of it good, some of it, not so good. So when I started searching for my own recipe, I stumbled upon one easy, healthy recipe from CHOW.

It’s super simple, economical, and my favorite part is it’s flexible. Once you’ve got the base, you can pretty much add anything you want in the way of dried fruit, nuts, seasonings and seeds. I also like that you know exactly what’s going in. Even with some of the natural or organic cereals and granolas out there, I still find words I don’t understand in their ingredient lists.

DIY Granola

1. In a large bowl, stir together three cups of old-fashioned rolled oats (not quick oats), three tablespoons brown sugar, a quarter teaspoon kosher salt, and a half teaspoon cinnamon.

2. In another bowl, stir together one-third cup honey (I used maple syrup), a quarter cup canola oil (I used grapeseed- canola is pretty much guaranteed to be GMO), and a teaspoon of vanilla. Dump this over the oat mixture and combine thoroughly. Get your hands in it to mix everything well, and to coat the oats evenly with the honey mixture. Heat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

before baking

3. Spread the mixture in a thin, even layer on a baking sheet and place on the center rack of the heated oven. Bake, stirring after 15 minutes, until the granola is a very light golden brown. It should take 20 to 30 minutes. If you like your granola crunchier with a toastier flavor, bake it a little longer, keeping a close eye on it—if it gets dark it will taste burnt.

after baking

4. Cool the granola completely, stirring it around so it doesn’t stick together. (It hardens as it cools.)

5. Once the granola’s cool, get creative: Now is the time to stir in all your extras like dried fruit, raw or toasted nuts and seeds, toasted coconut, etc. Store in an airtight container (this is very important—the granola goes stale easily) and eat within two weeks.

add goodies!

A couple of things with this recipe I did: the first time I made it, I added just about everything I could think of, coconut, bran cereal (hubby bought and never eats), nuts, dried fruit.. The last time I made it, I added a handful of trail mix, some rice crisps, pumpkin seeds and hemp hearts. Both were good and it all depends on what you like in your granola (I’m not picky). My suggestion is to add your nuts & seeds in with the granola when you bake it- it helps bring out their flavor. Don’t do this, however with your dried fruit, or it will dry it out even further.

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Thanks to the beautiful weather, I’m sure everyone has now been bit by the gardening bug. Admittedly, we are a little behind in our seed starting due to all the preparations we’ve been doing for the baby bean this spring. But this weekend was a gentle reminder to get on it. Having not ordered from any seed catalogues this year, we headed out to green haven to browse what we hoped was a more diverse selection of seeds.

Though there weren’t as many varieties as the seed catalogues, we came home pleased with our new stash. This year, we’ve decided to not grow so many cherry and grape tomaotes; last year we ended up with far too many (and still have jars full of savory jam, freezer bags full of frozen whole, and packets of dehydrated.) But really, there’s only so much you can do with little tomatoes.

This year, we picked out two bigger varieties; one coined a ‘mortgage lifter’, promising 2-4 lb tomatoes. the other, an heirloom beefsteak-type. Me thinks these would be excellent sandwich tomatoes. We also went with our old standby, roma, which I love to can and some ground cherries, which were really fun last year. Those combined with a few other varieties and maybe a few of our leftover cherry & grape tomato seeds from last year, and we’re good to go. We also picked up cucumber, eggplant and peppers to start. We’re going to get some lettuce, chard and pea greens going in the cold frames soon.

What I was really excited about this year was my new seed pot maker:

This simple, yet genius little device transforms strips of newspaper into little pots for planting. Its about as eco-friendly as you can get; as once the seedlings are ready for planting, you just stick the whole thing, newspaper and all into the ground. This is my first year trying this so I’m hoping I like it. Much smarter and cheaper than buying plastic, peat, coconut, etc pots.

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Before the deep freeze hit Lethbridge last weekend, my husband decided it was time to pull out the rest of the carrots we were ‘storing’ in the garden. Yes, we figured, why pick them and have them slowly wilt in our basement when they could stay in their own built in refrigerator in the ground? We did this last year, and found the carrots stored well, and just got sweeter the longer we left them. Little did we know we’d be able to leave them in the ground until January this year!

All he did was cover them with lots of leaves:Have you ever left anything in the garden? How do you store/preserve your food over the winter? In addition to these carrots, we’re still enjoying plenty of canned tomatoes, potatoes, onions, frozen herbs, relishes and jams. It’s so great to have garden goodies long after its been gone!